A more Feverish Ray

March 1, 2009

Another Fever Ray clip, “If I had a Heart”. Another Idea Fix analysis.

The lyrics speak of emptiness and heartlessness, two core aspects of nihilism . The start of the clip features a boats man taking children through a scene of calamity (i.e. 20th century fascist Europe’s Gotterdammerung). They glide through a scene of mass suicide (ala Jim Jones) in an old house with fascist iconography, and ‘after strange gods’- T.S Eliot. The suicide emanates from a pool, referenced in the other Fever Ray clip (below), where Karin conjures a primeval power (fascism?).

The meaning of the German Shepard a symbol of Nazi fascist domination and the tribes people who are still alive in the camp are harder to interpret. Though the Shepard fits easily into our hermeneutic. The tribes people could simply represent a religious/political or metaphysical class that survived the holocaust portrayed here, or are spectres of ancient tribal past?

This whole tableau could be a metaphor for the new generation emerging into the 21st century after Nazi Europe’s fall. The song and clip anticipates, and beckons even, a new form of fascism, yet to come…hence the ominous tone, and “this will never end, because I want more”…

The boats person could be taking the children out to Nietzschean ‘new seas’, and a future space beyond nihilism?